Interesting survey

[catsittingstill]

Democracy corps recently posted an analysis of the differences between far-right conservatives (20% of the electorate) and regular conservatives.  Fascinating stuff.

The good news from the survey of the focus groups, such as it is, is that the majority of the far-right conservatives do not seem to be motivated by racism.  The bad news is that they share a common belief that Obama is head or puppet of a conspiracy to deliberately destroy the country.  They believe they have special knowledge of his shady past and ill intentions that the rest of us are too lazy or misguided to seek out for ourselves.

And they are 20% of the electorate which makes them, what, 40-50 % of the Republican Party?  This worries me.   I sure hope the survey is wrong.

Comments

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Now, my folks are deeply conservative, and don't like the health-care reforms, and do a lot of their voting on candidates with anti-abortion platforms.

They talk about Obama more positively than they did Clinton. And they don't like the rudeness and extremism of the right-wingers who disrupt town meetings because the dialog isn't going their way. "What? It's only a good discussion if you're winning and everyone agrees with you?"

Yet some things bother me - like the over-reliance on FOX news, and the near hero-worship of Reagan. My folks also think too much media attention is being paid to those who are crying wolf about Obama's "shady past," which feeds into their feelings of persecution.

I recently read a biography of Reagan, and it pointed out that he was pretty fringe in his own party, but very charismatic, and drew people along on his pet policies that the mainstream Republicans couldn't stand. "The people" loved him, but his own party did not so much. I find it interesting that these far-right conservatives think the current R party is straying from the core Republican values, when really it was Reagan who was the outlier.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It sounds like your folks are conservative but not to the point of thinking Obama is deliberately destroying the country.

Reagan was the outlier in his time, but is he still the outlier? I think that depends on whether the Republican party is going to continue to try to please the far right. I have to admit that while I didn't like Reagan, he wasn't as crazy as this...

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

I think that if you took Reaganomics, and Reagan's core beliefs, and set them up comparing to what conservative mainstream of his time held up, then looked at what W. Bush and the Republicans currently in office champion, our current Republicans in power resemble the conservative mainstream of the 1980s more than they do Reagan's policies.

So I feel validated in my notions after reading that article. And, since Reagan is safely dead, he can be held up to ideals and not gainsay anyone with a reality check.

[bedlamhouse]

I'm not seeing anything identifying that segment as 20% of the electorate, did I miss something in the article where they state their selection for the focus group is that high a percentage? the closest thing I can see is a statement that liberal Democrats are more outnumbered by mainstream Democrats (at 36% to 61%) than these Republicans are outnumbered by mainstream Republicans. That might make your 40% of Republicans number somewhat accurate, but I think you are losing the fact that a lot of people who formerly identified themselves as Republicans no longer do so (me! me! me!)

That aside, I really liked this study and analysis. I am rather firmly in the "weakly partisan" area - I still consider myself more conservative than liberal but I reject the far-right ideology and certainly have rejected a strong party label of any kind.

The question is, how does it help us do something to create grounds for a dialog? While some commenting on this have mocked the idea of a mocked minority, I think there is some truth to the idea that there is an automatic ridiculing of the ideas generated by this group - something which is alarmingly similar to the automatic rejection by this group of "mainstream" ideas. When was the last time a voice trying to reason with one of this group's core values wasn't drowned out by the ridicule and snide comments aimed at Palin, Beck, or Limbaugh?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You're right, the 20% figure is not in the survey/analysis itself, but rather in this piece written by Johnathan Chait for _The New Republic_ that linked to the survey. (http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/who-you-calling-deranged)

The 20% figure imbedded itself so firmly in my head I thought it was the Democracy Corps that said it.

Hmm. In fact, while the Democracy Corps didn't put it quite that way, they did say this:

The conservative Republican base represents almost one-in-five voters in the electorate, and nearly two out of every three self-identified Republicans.

in the fourth paragraph.

So apparently they're not 40% of Republicans but more like 60%, maybe largely because, as you point out, more moderate people have left the Republican Party.

I don't know how the study helps create grounds for a dialog--except that it probably helps to know where the other side is starting from.

In this case I don't know that dialog is even possible--what is there to say to someone who believes that the only reason you don't hate Obama is that you are ignorant? What could you possibly say to someone like that to persuade them they're mistaken when they already believe they know better than you?

The ones who thought that they were better informed than the rest of us reminded me forcibly of an evangelical fundamentalist I knew who thought I (yo, molecular biologist here) only believed in evolution because I didn't know as much about it as he (computer programmer) did. I wasted two years trying to reason with that guy and got absolutely nowhere. It gave me a new (understanding? appreciation? recognition?) of people like that--people who just ignore what you say and repeat the same ...wrong assertion. Recently I came across a study that said people in the bottom 10% of a skill or knowledge often think they are above average--I thought immediately of him.

As for ideas like Obama was born in some other country--what is there in that to take seriously? His birth in Hawaii is a matter of public record and people getting all paranoid about the fibers in his birth certificate or the fact that it didn't make the papers --good grief! What does it even matter? Given that his Mom was American, he could have been born in Timbuktu or Antarctica or on the moon and he still would have had American citizenship.

When an idea is crazy, and you're dealing with someone who assumes you're the enemy if you don't believe it, what is the right reaction?

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

The right reaction is to leave, and to form a majority with the other 80+ percent of your country's population.

And also, if considering voting for ANY Republican, be mindful of these statistics. That Republican, if elected, WILL govern so as not to offend the Palinists.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Or, will reach out to the middle and end the divisions between parties, and really, really make the far right feel like the persecuted minority.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I agree that this is a possibility--but to reach out to the middle such a politician would have to offend 20% of the electorate, or more than half of the votes zie already has. Standing up for reality at the cost of alienating more than half of the people who would otherwise vote for zir would require extraordinary courage--courage which I certainly hope would be recognized and rewarded by the rest of the electorate, but courage which I suspect is rare.